Safe As Houses
by tessiete
Summary: Even as he lay bleeding in the hot, Kentucky sun, he'd confessed to everything. So they locked him away.


_"Your own safety is at stake when your neighbour's wall is ablaze." - Horace_

By the time they get there, everyone is already dead.

Almost.

Because almost is what happens when you shoot a gun, but don't look at where you're aiming.

Almost. But not quite.

The inside of the church is filled with the grisly remains of over a hundred people. The dead are piled high against the walls, buried under overturned pews; pinioned, skewered, and impaled; stabbed, shot, burnt, and partially defenestrated. There's a sea of blood slowly coagulating on the ground beneath the thicket of bodies crowding the floor, but outside, there is only one body.

He's different. He doesn't look like he should be there. He's dressed sharply. His suit is still crisp, his shoes still shine, and his hands are covered in blood. There's the trail of a single bullet which has torn through flesh, and shattered the zygomatic bone of his left cheek, as well as the lens of the glasses he wears. His blood, too, soaks the earth beneath him, and coats their heavy boots. But when they lean close, listening for sounds of life, they can hear the faint rush of air being drawn, and "everyone" becomes "almost".

They are the first responders. They are efficient, they are careful, and thank God, they are fast. Only minutes have passed since the first frantic phone calls from down the street began flooding the dispatch centre. Minutes, since the indifference of neighbours turned to concern, and then horror as they came to understand that the shouting they heard was not the usual zealous timbre of bigots best ignored, but instead cries, and snarls of fury, and rage being manumitted from the fragile captivity of devotion. Perhaps it was no great loss to let them feast upon each other, but still, the sounds grew louder and more vicious, and soon each neighbour outside the kill zone turned to their phones, their fear and worry prompting them to call for help.

Help was fast, but not fast enough to prevent anything. And now, standing amongst the carnage, they all begin to wonder what use there is in having responded at all, if they can do nothing more than pick up the stinking, fetid corpses of people who are as hateful in death as they had been in life. They can't change anything. They can't save anything. And maybe that is better.

But it is still quite a task to sort the remains. The first responders call for support, and soon there are ten or more darkly uniformed people picking through the rows of bodies, lifting them, turning them, feeling for pulses at throats, and soft, quavering breaths against their cheeks. Some of them are sick in the aftermath of violence, but none of them turn away from the scene before them, even as lifeless hands grasp at their ankles, fingers curled into talons. It is a desolate place, and when each new corner of the vaulted space reveals more death, and more death, it becomes a hopeless one.

Then, one body breathes. Just barely.

Everyone who has come to help is galvanised. They have a focus, and they have a purpose, and it is all very single-minded by after that. Everyone needs good news. Everyone needs to salvage something from this massacre. Everyone needs to go home at night, and tell their wives, and their husbands, and their children that they had a good day at work. They had saved a life, and they had had a good day.

There is such cooperation in his rescue, it is almost a shame he is in one piece, and thus only one ambulance can have the final, glorious task of taking him to hospital.

By then, the news has travelled. The closest Casualty centre is gowned and gloved, prepared to deal with a mass trauma. They wait. But as more time passes, the radio calls updating them on the situation are increasingly scarce, and the messages shorter as those in the field report that __still__ they have found no survivors.

The high alert the staff are under is lowered once, then twice, then three times before a voice comes over the line telling them to expect one ambulance, transporting one survivor, but it doesn't look good.

It's a small town, with little violence outside the odd bar fight, or fit of road rage. Even in the south, a gunshot wound to the head is something rarely seen in hospital. More often than not, it takes one on a rather more direct route to the morgue, so the small detour through the ER is something of an event for many reasons. Perhaps, in a large city centre his care would be more efficient, his stitches neater, and the lines and tubes placed with more dexterity, but it could not be more attentive. Every hand that can be spared is lent to the service of medicine, and before long, and to the astonishment of those who save him, he is stablised, and packed off to the OR for surgery. In the south, most people call this a miracle.

The night has not yet fallen in Kentucky when eyes glassy with drugs and horror flicker open. There is no recognition in them yet, but when the nurse draws closer and inquires after his well being, he speaks. It is nothing helpful, nothing to identify himself or his origins – his training is better than that; more deeply ingrained – but it is damning, nonetheless.

"I killed them," he whispers. Then he says it again. "I killed them, I killed them...I killed all of them."

The young nurse who's come to comfort tears her hand from his, the grip that had bound her far stronger than she'd anticipated in one so ill. It leaves bruising across the thin tendons of the back of her hand, hidden by the darkness of her skin, but she feels nothing except her own disgust. She knows where he'd been found. Everyone does. But she'd never imagined he'd have anything to confess.

Consciousness is mercifully brief, and after noting his vitals in his chart – she is still a damn good nurse – she runs down the hall to the Nurse's Station, her white sneakers squeaking on the polished floor. The charge nurse is a formidable woman who has the air of having seen everything at least once. She'd transferred from New York the year before in the hope of a few quiet years in the sun before retirement, so maybe she was as weathered as she looked, but even she grips the desk, and feels her mouth dry at the report of her junior colleague.

It makes sense. He'd been found outside. He'd been dressed in a suit, and when he'd said what he said, the girl claims he spoke with an accent. He didn't look like he belonged there. He didn't belong there. So even though the church had been a notoriously awful place, filled with awful people, the man in the bed down the hall was a murderer. Never mind the masses of fingerprints that coated the weapons recovered. Never mind the clear indications of a common violence, committed by every single body in that room. Never mind that few of the dead were very much missed. He had confessed. He was someone that no one knew, and it was perfectly reasonable to conclude that he was the culpable party. Not their neighbours. Not their friends. This would never have happened in their town. They weren't the sort.

The police, so helpful and kind only hours before, return. They want a statement, which the doctors flatly deny, their determination helped by the persistent state of unconsciousness the man has lapsed back into. But there can be no denying the fact – he is dangerous. He'd said so himself, and after such destruction, they can afford to take no chances.

Space is made, and a private room is sourced. A secure room. At times, very few and far between, it's been used to house inmates from the nearby prison, come to the hospital for treatment or surgery. Now, it is made to contain the wasted body of the man who's killed so many of their own. The windows are barred, the door locked, and though his care is just as solicitous as before, there is a coldness present that had been lacking when he'd been a victim, instead of a perpetrator. Nurses and doctors come in, they check their stats, they sign their charts, and they shut him away.

And when V-Day comes, he's as safe as houses.


End file.
